What this is about: Watching all of the anime shows so you don’t have to! For more information about me and my reviews, click here for details on what I am reviewing.

Series Premise: Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, or “Electric Wave Woman and Youthful Man”, is a twelve-episode weekly television anime series that started in April 2011, based on a light novel series by Hitoma Iruma. The story follows Makoto as he looks forward to starting his life anew living with his aunt, only to quickly discover he has a crazy cousin that believes she is an alien and wears a futon wrapped around her head.

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ep. tl;dr review: It’s confirmed: Every single female in this show is Koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs; Makoto decides to try and un-crazy Erio.

Episode Summary: Makoto goes on a date with Ryuuko as he settles in to his daily life. Aunt Meme teasingly flirts with Makoto, then warns him it would be best not to get too involved with Erio. Rejecting her advice, Makoto decides to help Erio snap out of her delusion, prove that she is not an alien. He fixes up the bike, then speeds downhill with her towards the ocean, urging her to make them fly. When they end up taking a spill in the water, Erio is shocked at the realization she cannot fly, begins to think she may be human, and the two of them properly introduce themselves for the first time.

My Impressions: As if we didn’t know it already, but EVERY. SINGLE. FEMALE. CHARACTER. around Makoto has some sort of major malfunction. We already knew how totally divorced from reality Erio was — after all, that was the main point of the show to begin with. But her MILF-eriffic mother also has major avoidance and maturity issues (heavy-handed flirting with Makoto? Not sure if teasing, not sure if serious, 100% sure is creepy). The ever-ebullient Ryuuko is cheerfully crazy in an adorable way…in small doses. The final crazy lady is Maekawa, who parades around town in the most ridiculous costumes for the hell of it (sandwich? eggplant? egg? uh, fish?), although she only gets token screen time this time around. In any case, Makoto certainly has a knack for attracting the nutcases, doesn’t he?

And alas, that seems to be the show’s Achilles heel. Maybe they’ll ultimately get around to explaining why everyone is so majorly fucked up, but at this point it feels more like crazy characters for the sake of being crazy. I remain especially annoyed at Meme, who should be the only adult in the room, but is possibly the most immature of them all, and her advances on her underage cousin (playing around or not) creep me out, and her explanation why she’s so cool to Erio only leaves me that much less impressed with her as a person. Major props to Makoto, though, for making the attempt to reach out and bring Erio “back to Earth”, even if the highly-potentially disastrous way he decides to go about it makes me wonder about his sanity as well.

I gave Denpa Onna the ol’ college try, but after three episodes the entire cast continues to grate on my nerves, so it is probably best to set it aside for now. A bit of a minor shame, because it looks like we only *just* turned a corner and now it’s time to bring Erio back from the deep ocean depths in which she has sunk. And because the character designs are so incredibly gorgeous, even if the constant Shaft-isms detract from the storytelling itself.

“So basically, this felt like a three episode prologue to the first “in reality” meeting between Makoto and Erio. Due to her being such an incoherent wall until now, coming to her senses actually did feel like, “oh wow, so she can be normal.” Would this be a moe gap?…A show about nonsense is okay. A show where the characters can’t even make a conversation make sense, is not okay. ” – Random Curiosity

“To be honest, there are flaws to this series; the characters feel too one-dimensional at times, and the quirks to some characters don’t contribute to their characterizations much. However, the sense of serious complexity to some of the characters that are touched upon here are intriguing to see in action. Grade: 4.1/5.” – Emory Anime Club

“Greetings people of the planet Earth. Moe Monster takes a look at episode 03 of Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko. The crotch warming tale of super cute weird girls, some guy and a sexy 22-year-old woman pretending to be 39 for no apparent reason. What? Like you could describe it any better. ” – Moe Monster

“The truth is that the show not only does have its awesome characters, but also has some interesting (read: mysterious and totally unpredictable) plot. What we’ve gathered so far is that Erio’s apparent insanity is just her way of coping with her amnesia. And, you know, the actual insanity that usually comes with it.” – The Kotatsu